Samsung has announced today that its board of directors has approved the spinoff of Samsung's LCD arm. The new company will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. Samsung also notes that moving forward, the new LCD company it has created will consider other restructuring measures such as a merger was Samsung Mobile Display and S-LCD Corporation.

This move comes at a time when profits are slipping significantly in LCD market. Samsung has been increasingly losing money on LCD screens even though it's the world's largest maker TVs. Samsung will shift its focus to new OLED panels moving forward, which are growing significantly and generating much larger profits.

Research company DisplaySearch estimates the global sales of LCD TVs are going to shrink by 8% to about $92 billion by 2015. At the same time, that OLED market is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2018 and make up 16% of the total display market. Today, OLED panels make up only 4% of the market.

The Samsung LCD spinoff is expected to be called Samsung Display Co Ltd and will be launched as new business on April 1. The company will have 750 billion won in capital according to Samsung. Samsung is positioned well in the OLED market with its Samsung Mobile Display providing almost all the OLED panels available. Samsung notes that the spinoff is still subject to regulators and the approval of shareholders.

In December of 2011, Sony split from the LCD joint venture it operated with Samsung due to poor profits. Other LCD manufacturers like Sharp have significantly reduced LCD output. Three of the top firms in LCD market -- Panasonic, Sony, and Sharp -- are together expected to lose $17 billion this year alone.

This is foolishness. OLED have not scaled, yet. They still are only making relatively small ones. Anyone who predicts that they will take off at any particular point is working without a safety rope. :-) If the industry can get working displays that are larger, then this may happen. Otherwise, forget about it. It just jumps to a conclusion that currently doesn't have much of a factual basis.

OLED still has major hurdles to overcome. First, they can't be made big enough, because of dead pixel issues. Second, their life span is not so great. The colors tend to change over the display's lifetime.Traditional LCD will remain the workhorse of displays for quite a while.

That stuff might have been true a few years ago but most of it isn't anymore. There was also 50+" OLED TV's at CES.

The main issue i have with OLED is that colour reproduction isn't as accurate as IPS LCD, even though the colours are more vibrant and generally look better to most people theyre not as accurate. But i'm sure this will be fixed.

How are dead pixels a problem? They make phones and stuff like that with the same resolution as computer monitors, surely it won't affect larger monitors any more than smaller ones? In fact, wouldn't 'larger' pixels make them more reliable?

Plasma TV's had dead pixel problems, burn in problems, and all kinds of other problems. Their lifespan still isn't "that great" compared to LCD's either. That didn't stop them from coming to the market and selling millions of units did it?

There will be a 55" OLED in your local electrical retailer (if they are of any sort of size) this summer. It will retail for around the $7k mark :). APPARENTLY the colour issues are fixed and overall lifespan of the panel is still WELL beyond how long your average TV will last (7ish years is normal life for a TV).